Providing support in relation to the
implementation of the
EU Soil Thematic Strategy
Drivers and transboundary impacts
of soil degradation
Revision: final
31 July 2019
Service contract No 07.0201/2016/742739/SER/ENV.D.l
PREPARED FOR: PREPARED BY:
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
DG ENVIRONMENT
Task leader: Helmholtz Centre for environmental research - UFZ
Client Title References
European Commission, DG Environment
D.1.1 Drivers and transboundary impacts of soil degradation Contract no. ENV.D.1/SER/2016/0041
Document Information
Title Transboundary impacts of soil degradation Lead Author Hagemann, Nina
Contributors Álvaro-Fuentes, J., Siebielec, G., Castaneda, C., Maring, L., Blauw, M., Bartke, S., Dietze, V., Arrue, J.L., Playán, E., Herrero, J., Plaza-Bonilla, D. Distribution DG ENV
Report Number 1.1
Providing support in relation to the implementation of the EU Soil Thematic Strategy is a three-year contract commissioned by the Directorate-General (DG) for Environment (ENV) of the European Commission (Service contract No 07.0201/2016/742739/SER/ENV.D.I, duration 6 Dec 2016 -5 Dec 2019). The overall objective is to support DG ENV with technical, scientific and socio-economic as- pects of soil protection and sustainable land use, in the context of the implementation of the non- legislative pillars (awareness raising, research, integration) of the Soil Thematic Strategy and the implementation of the European Soil Partnership. The support includes the production of six in- depth reports providing scientific background on a range of soil and soil-policy related issues in Eu- rope, three policy briefs, logistic and organisational support for six workshops, and the organisation and provision of content to the European website and the wiki platform on soil-related policy in- struments. The work is performed by: Delta res, The Netherlands (coordinator); IUNG Institute of Soil Science and Plant Cultivation, Poland; UFZ- Helmholtz Centre for environmental research Germany; IAMZ - Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Zaragoza, Spain; CSIC-EEAD Spanish National Research Council - Estación Experimental de Aula Dei, Spain. This deliverable is an in depth-report "Drivers and transboundary impacts of soil degradation" (Deliverable 1.1).
Disclaimer
The information and views set out in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily re- flect the official opinion of the European Commission. The European Commission does not guaran- tee the accuracy of the data included in this study. Neither the European Commission nor any per- son acting on the Commission's behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made on the information contained therein.
Document History
Date Version Prepared by Organisation Approved by review 19/5/2017 0.1 Nina Hagemann UFZ
13/7/2017 0.2 Nina Hagemann UFZ 22/12/2017 0.3 Nina Hagemann UFZ 09/05/2018 0.4 Nina Hagemann UFZ 07/07/2018 0.5 Nina Hagemann UFZ 09/11/2018 0.6 Nina Hagemann UFZ
31/07/2019 1.0 Nina Hagemann UFZ Henriette Otter Linda Maring
3
Content
Executive summary ... 4
1. Introduction ... 6
2. Transboundary impacts soil degradation based on drivers and pressures ... 12
2.1 Lifestyle preferences ... 12
2.1.1 Pressure from lifestyle preferences: Urbanisation ... 13
2.1.2 Transboundary impacts of urbanisation ... 18
2.2 Climate Change ... 19
2.2.1 Pressure from climate change: Extreme weather events ... 21
2.2.2 Transboundary impacts of extreme weather events ... 23
2.3 Economic growth ... 28
2.3.1 Pressures from economic growth: Land use management, waste management, industrial activities and energy production ... 29
2.3.2 Transboundary impacts of land use management, waste management, industrial activities and energy production ... 33
3. Current responses ... 35
3.1 Political strategies ... 35
3.1.1 Global level... 35
3.1.2 European level ... 35
3.2 Data provision and monitoring ... 39
4. Recommendations for future action ... 41
4.1 Political action needed from global to local level ... 41
4.2 Increased understanding of processes through data collection and monitoring ... 42
Acknowledgments ... 45
References ... 45
4
Executive summary
This report presents evidence of the societal challenges of transboundary impacts, the drivers, and consequences of soil degradation, as well as data and knowledge gaps. The message conveyed by the report is that there is clear evidence of transboundary impacts and drivers of soil degradation and that it has physical, ecological, economic and social causes. Soil degradation does not stop at borders. Soil degradation in general rises increasing public attention after decades of awareness raising efforts. However, transboundary impacts of soil degradation are rarely addressed in literature. This is one of the key findings when conducting an in-depth literature review as was done for this report. Many sources highlight the transboundary nature of soil but there are few assessing the proportion of trans-boundary impacts of soil degradation in Europe. The report follows the DPSIR approach (Driver, Pres-sure, State, Impact and Response), which presents a useful framework for systemic analysis of char-acteristic relationships of soil degradation. In this sense, Section 2 presents the key impacts of trans-boundary soil degradation based on drivers (e.g. lifestyle preferences, climate change and economic growth), pressures (such as land use management, waste management, extreme weather events, in-dustrial activities, energy production and urbanisation) and impacts (such as landslides, soil compac-tion, soil contaminacompac-tion, soil erosion, desertificacompac-tion, soil sealing and soil organic matter decline). The (transboundary) impacts presented in Section 2 are very diverse and cover accelerated climate change, loss of biodiversity, human health and water security at the local to global level. Moreover, the EU consumption pattern has an impact on land use with high environmental and social impacts including land degradation outside Europe, the so called 'EU's land footprint'. As a response (Section 3) there are currently many ongoing activities across Europe focusing on soils and soil protection that have the potential to also raise awareness and address the transboundary drivers and impacts of soil degradation. Moreover, many international strategies and initiatives also aim at addressing soils and transboundary effects of soil degradation such as the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Target Set-ting programme, which is an UNCCD programme, or the Voluntary Guidelines for Sustainable Soil Management, developed by the Global Soil Partnership and adopted by the FAO. Specific legislation at EU level is still missing but several directives and regulations address soil degradation, very few also transboundary effects such as the EU Water Framework Directive1 or the Floods Directive2.
Key aspects that need to be addressed are political actions at different levels and data availability and harmonization to increase awareness about transboundary effects of soil degradation and trigger ac-tions at various levels. Political acac-tions are required including transboundary regional planning that requires a masterplan at different levels, and across borders, even globally.
It would include initiating a process of assessing the costs of degradation and a discussion at European level on who bears these costs. The process of data assessment and harmonization is ongoing, includ-ing activities at EU level, e.g. Copernicus programme, the European Soil Data Center (ESDAC) or
1 Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for
Community action in the field of water policy.
2 Directive 2007/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2007 on the assessment and
5 soil topsoil survey. Some member states have also national soil monitoring and soil information sys-tems collecting information on soil. However, data access and availability are still being severely hin-dered due to different reasons including incompatible data formats and access to data from different actor groups. Whenever data are available, these need to be harmonized to be comparable across the EU, which requires new approaches to modelling and calibration methods for data acquisition and evaluation. Data from across Europe need to be linked and mapped as well as monitored, which is the objective of EU programmes such as LUCAS, ESDAC, Copernicus or Corine Land Cover.
Based on the findings of the report on drivers of soil degradation that have a transboundary dimension as well the transboundary impact, recommendations for further activities are proposed:
➢ Drivers and transboundary impacts are not limited to the EU or Europe. Some impacts such as climate change, food security, biodiversity loss have a global dimension. Therefore, the topic of transboundary impact of soil degradation has to be dealt at European level (e.g. it has to become an essential part of European sector policies and especially development policies) but also at global level.
➢ Due to the direct and indirect costs of degradation, there is a great need for cooperation be-tween countries to address challenges, a need for exchange of knowledge and closing knowledge gaps and a need for harmonized data for an effective soil policy. It has to be sup-ported by policy measures monitored by European and national institutions. To address this need, awareness is needed for the detrimental impacts of inaction as a first step.
➢ To improve the data base for decision making, transboundary environmental issues concern-ing the various forms of soil degradation as well as the assessment of socio-economic impacts in Europe and beyond should be included in priority lists of programmes such as the EU Frame-work Programme for Research and Innovation, Joint Programming Initiatives, Article 185 ac-tions, ERA-NET, LIFE, COST, ESF or Cohesion Policy – nonetheless, transboundary local to re-gional and even crowdfunded research will facilitate the creation and exchange of knowledge and its transfer.
➢ Policy makers need clear messages as well as data and figures supporting these messages. An example is the identification of economic drivers and their translation into economic figures. It requires examples, study cases, simple and short policy briefs, clear figures, products that can be understood and shared by different users with different backgrounds and objectives. This information has to be communicated effectively.
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1. Introduction
Soils are an essential and non-renewable natural resource hosting goods and services vital to ecosys-tems and human life (FAO, 2016a). They perform key environmental, economic and social functions essential to meet societal challenges not only at local but also at European and global levels. Healthy soils play a positive role in the delivery of ecosystem services (ESS). “Soil degradation is defined as a change in the soil health status resulting in a diminished capacity of the ecosystem to provide goods and services for its beneficiaries. Degraded soils do not provide the normal goods and services of the particular soil in its ecosystem” (FAO, 2017).
Soil health and ecosystem services are linked to proper soil functions. However, these are increasingly under pressure and European society has been experiencing soil degradation for decades (Panagos et al., 2016; FAO, 2017). The types of soil degradation differ, but soil degradation is mainly caused, and accelerated, by human activity and land-use practices. The severity of soil degradation is outlined by Cherlet et al. (2013: III): “10% (about 2 million ha) of the European Union’s most productive soils show early signs of a decline in land productivity”.
Soil degradation is often considered as a local phenomenon, for example, even soil erosion by water or wind is often considered within the limited boundaries of a field. Also contaminated land is consid-ered a local phenomenon. However, many degradation types have not only an on-site effect but also off-site effects. Table 1 summarizes typical off-site costs. Off-site effects of soil degradation and espe-cially the transboundary effects are not yet well studied. Reports on sources of soil degradation and their impacts are rather dispersed and seldom integrated. Especially data and information about the cause-effect chains are missing to provide evidence.
To illustrate the linkages of the (often global) drivers, their relating local or regional pressures and their transboundary impacts, this report builds upon the DPSIR approach (Driver, Pressure, State, Im-pact and Response), which presents a useful framework for the systemic analysis of characteristic re-lationships of soil degradation.
The starting point of analysis is usually the natural megatrends as well as social and economic devel-opments. In our analysis these are the so-called drivers of land use, which often result in soil degra-dation. These drivers are lifestyle preferences, climate change and economic growth. These drivers were selected as the most relevant according to the sources that were reviewed for this report. The three drivers reflect the individual, ecological and economic decision-making determinants:
• Lifestyle preferences: Individuals’ attitudes determining typically their decision-making, such as consumption, housing, mobility preferences.
• Climate change: Biotic and abiotic processes influencing the geogenic conditions, such as ex-treme weather events or desertification.
• Economic growth: Resource efficient quest for an increasing productivity and competitive-ness supporting higher welfare, such as industrial activities and energy production.
Other drivers could be named that are important for soil management. For example, several sources also highlight population growth as an important driver. However, as it is difficult to separate it from the other three key drivers, we consider population growth as an element of lifestyle preferences, climate change and economic growth.
7 We do not claim to provide a complete picture of all potential drivers, but we do highlight those of obvious importance. This implicates that more relevant drivers, pressures and transboundary impacts of soil degradation might exist.
The identified drivers cause pressures on land and soil, for example, they result in changes of land use management (caused, for example) by economic growth, urbanisation (caused for example) by chang-ing lifestyle preferences or extreme weather events (caused, for example) by accelerated climate change. These pressures to the current status of soil lead to soil degradation (a change in land use management could cause soil erosion or urbanisation could cause soil sealing) that can lead to broader
impacts3, e.g. losing biodiversity and ecosystem services (local impact) and or challenging food
secu-rity (regional or even global impact) because of lower supply. At an extreme level, soil degradation can contribute to migration, threaten human health, endanger water, food security and biodiversity loss. In the context of this report, impact is not limited to physical and environmental impacts, but extends to economic (such as trade) and social (such as development, health and security) impacts. Prominent examples are migration, or food insecurity induced by flooding, desertification, pollution and sedimentation.
Figure 1 gives an overview of the investigated paths. For example, certain drivers will cause trans-boundary impacts in the form of challenging food security, increasing flood events, endangering water security or intensifying sedimentation. At the same time, not only the impacts, but also the drivers (the cause of degradation) can be distant and transboundary or trans-border4. The drivers discussed in this report are the most prominent ones according to the literature.
Figure 1 illustrates how important drivers of soil degradation are linked to pressures, which through changes in the state of soils lead to transboundary impacts. Each driver leads to a number of pressures; however, these are not always easy to describe and to be quantified. Therefore, this report focusses on the most plausible to be described in more detail. The key drivers for Europe identified from the literature are lifestyle preferences, climate change and economic growth.
An introduction on soil degradation can be found in the annex.
3Please note that for the reason of visualisation in the Figure, but also the structure later in Section 2, the “state of soil” is
summarised under impact in our illustration of the DPSIR approach.
8 Degradation Off-site costs (costs borne by third parties and society, such as public administration, private sectors, tax payers and society as a whole) (Off-site cost entries which
are marked with * could be quantified) Biodiversity Costs linked to the loss of
eco-system functions
Costs related to impacts on landscape and amenity values
Costs related to changes in genetic resources
Sealing Costs on biodiversity Costs due to impacts on land-scape and amenity values
Costs due to fragmentation of habitats and disruption of mi-gration corridors for
Wildlife
Cost linked to runoff water from housing and traffic areas, which is potentially contaminated
Erosion Costs of sediment dredging, treatment and disposal* and sediment load in surface waters
Damage costs to infrastructure (e.g. roads and other transport infrastructure) and properties by sediments run off and flood-ing*
Costs due to necessary treat-ment of water (surface, groundwater)*
Costs due to damage to recreational functions*
Economic effects (e.g.) income losses and costs of healthcare
Decline of SOM
Costs related to an increased release of greenhouse gases from soil*
Costs due to loss of biodiversity and biological activity in soil
Costs due to the loss of fertil-ity and increased use of ferti-lizers to maintain yields level
Compaction Costs due to reduced water in-filtration into the soil
Costs due to increased leaching of soil nitrogen
Costs linked to increased emissions of greenhouse gases due to poor aeration of soil
Salinisation Costs due to damage to infra-structure (roads/bridges) from shallow saline groundwater*
Costs due to damage to water supply infrastructure*
Environmental costs, e.g. im-pacts on native vegetation, ri-parian ecosystems and wet-lands*
Costs due to negative effects on tour-ism*
Landslides Impact on human lives and well-being
Damage to property and infra-structure
Indirect negative effects on economic activities due to in-terruption of transport routes
Ruptures of underground pipelines, dis-location of storage tanks, release of chemicals stored at ground level and contamination of surface waters with as-sociated off-site costs as described al-ready under erosion
Contamina-tion
Costs of increased health care needs for people affected by
Costs of treatment of surface water, groundwater or drinking
Costs for insurance companies and costs for increased food safety controls
Costs of dredging and disposing of con-taminated sediments downstream
Costs for the depre-ciation of surround-ing land*
9 Table 1: Off-site costs of soil degradation based on the impact assessment for the Soil Thematic Strategy (EC, 2006)
contamination* and increased food safety controls
water contaminated through the soil*
10 Due to the complexity of relationships and the fact that many studies are performed with specific administrative / national or regional boundaries, it is very difficult to measure the exact proportion of transboundary impacts and to find available data on drivers or pressures for Europe. Notwithstanding, as will be shown, the evidence for the existence of transboundary impacts is apparent.
The responses as an element of the DPSIR framework are not illustrated in Figure 1, but they are addressed in an individual section (Section 3) in this report. The challenges of protecting our soils from further degradation are manifold to reduce the negative impacts, especially in transboundary contexts. However, policy responses are few and soil degradation in general, and transboundary impacts of soil degradation in particular, have not yet reached broad societal or political attention, even though many organisations provide factual information, strategies and key messages.
11 Examples are the Soil Thematic Strategy5, consisting of four pillars to avoid soil degradation in the EU, or the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UN, 1994), that aims at reaching land degradation neutrality (see for example Orr et al., 2017). A key challenge is that even though the links between drivers, pressures and impacts can be visualised as in Figure 1, most of them cannot be easily quanti-fied. This limits the ability to illustrate the severity and urgency for action at a supranational level. Even when quantification is possible, numbers may strongly differ between countries, e.g. data are collected using different methods or the years in which data were collected differ, so data are not comparable. Moreover, while some countries have time series to identify changes others do not. To summarise, more data and information are needed to quantify the relationships and strengthen the evidence.
Chapter 2 illustrates how the drivers are linked to pressures and impacts in a transboundary context, making explicit the current knowledge and especially data gaps. Examples from EU member states demonstrating how soil degradation impacts on other countries are given. Soil degradation outside the EU, as a driver of migration and a major threat to global security, will also be addressed. Chapter 3 highlights the most relevant responses by focusing on policies and data provision and monitoring. The report concludes in Chapter 4 with recommendations for further action.
The target groups of this report are policy makers, but also experts in urban land, water management and development aid. The message conveyed by the report is that despite obvious information and data gaps, there are clear drivers that cause transboundary impacts (e.g. physical, ecological, eco-nomic and social) due to soil degradation.
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2. Transboundary impacts soil degradation based on drivers and pressures
This section provides specific and memorable examples for the interlinkages between drivers, pres-sures and their (transboundary) impacts. Each of the three drivers is described in an individual sub-section, including the pressures that are caused by the driver (highlighted in green and linked with bold arrows). For each driver at least one pressure is described in more detail.
The aim of the section is not to provide a complete representation of all possible pressures that are caused by a specific driver but rather to illustrate with plausible examples the interlinkages between a driver and the pressure. Also note that many pressures could be caused by several of the drivers. To omit repetition, we focus on the driver-pressure-links for which we found good examples and evi-dence. For each pressure, at least one example is given in this section.
Finally, examples of the types of degradation and the transboundary impacts (highlighted in red and linked with bold arrows) of the specific pressure are described. This means that with each sub-section the reader learns how a specific driver leads to a specific soil threat (pressure) that causes soil degra-dation (e.g. landslides or soil erosion) with transboundary impacts (e.g. increasing flood events).
2.1 Lifestyle preferences
Lifestyle preferences, i.e. individuals’ attitudes determining typically their decision-making, are asso-ciated with various pressures: Land use management, waste management, industrial activities, energy production and urbanisation. These pressures cause transboundary impacts, including increasing flood events, losing biodiversity and ecosystem functions, challenging food security, boosting climate change, threating human health, affecting sedimentation and endangering water security. (see Figure 2). Lifestyle preferences investigated as a driver of soil degradation have diverse facets, not least a clear link to increasing welfare. With an increasing world population, food demand is increasing and food consumption patterns are changing with economic growth, in particular meat consumption which is associated with increasing demand for land. In addition, people around the globe, including aging population in European countries, demand higher living standards that include larger houses, increasing mobility and social facilities. In city centres, these amenities are rare so that people tend to move outside the cities while aiming at staying close to urban areas. Another trend is that people move from rural areas to cities because of the job and education opportunities. It is estimated that in 2020 about 80% of people in the EU will be living in cities, in some member states the percentage will be considerably higher (EC, 2013b).
13 Figure 2: DPSIR approach applied to soil degradation from a transboundary perspective for the driver lifestyle preferences (Source: Own compilation).
2.1.1 Pressure from lifestyle preferences: Urbanisation
Europe is increasingly urbanising (Figure 3) and many social and economic activities depend on the availability of land. The quest for new housing, business facilities and transportation infrastructure leads to dramatic soil degradation in the form of land take and soil sealing. Soil sealing is a major and direct soil degradation impact of urbanisation. Impermeable asphalt is still the most frequently used material to cover soils. The type of material used is decisive for the degree of loss of soil environmental functions (Prokop et al., 2011; EU, 2013b).
14 Urbanisation processes as a consequence of the movement of people to cities generates various pres-sures on land and soil. The term ‘urban sprawl’ is commonly used to describe physical expansion of urban areas. Direct effects of soil sealing are easier to be assessed than effects prompted by related causes that often accomplish urbanisation, such as climate change, changes in soil functions, social changes, economic changes, mobility, etc. However, different methods have been proposed for quan-tification, e.g. using indicator-based calculations, datasets from remote sensing and estimates result-ing from multivariate analysis (see e.g. Behnisch et al., 2016).
Land degradation due to desertification or loss of fertility triggers land abandonment and migration from rural to urban areas in some parts of Europe. As a consequence, some people leave their land and move to other parts of Europe (intra-EU movements of people). Several examples exist for the transnational occurrence of urbanisation in Europe. As discussed in Sohn & Stambolic (2015), as a result of the European integration, border regions inside Europe are attractive industrial and housing areas. Table 2 presents examples of European cross-border metropolitan regions.
Figure 3: European population living in land and urban areas (Source: Nabielek et al., 2016: 12)
15 Table 2: Cross-border metropolitan regions identified in European Spatial PlanningObservation Network (ESPON) and by Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung (BBSR)
Entities ESPON BBSR Cross-border di-mension [% of population] Population [million] Cross-border di-mension [% of surface] Population [million] Aachen-Liège-Maas-tricht (B-D-NL) 49.7 3.1 33.87 3.5 Arnhem·Nijmegen (NL-D) 11.7 1.2 – – Basel (CH-D-F) 52.0 1.0 80.90 2.4 Bruxelles/Brussel (B-NL) – – 18.78 6.7 Eindhoven (NL-B) – – 15.78 2.6 Genève (CH-F) 31.4 0.7 91.68 1.3 Gent (B-NL) – – 17.70 2.1 Graz (A-SLO) – – 11.24 1.2 Groningen (NL-D) – – 11.42 1.7 Innsbruck (A-D) – – 30.40 0.6 Katowice-Ostrava (PL-CZ) 18.6 5.3 – – København-Malmö (DK-S) 33.8 2.8 54.74 2.9 Lausanne (CH-F) – – 13.06 0.8 Lille (F-B) 16.8 3.1 23.66 3.6 Luxembourg (L-F-D-B) 61.8 1.0 77.50 1.8 Nice (F-I-MC) 9.0 1.2 15.16 1.4 Saarbrücken (D-F) 13.0 1.1 – – Salzburg (A-D) – – 31.83 1.0 Skopje (MK-RKS) – – 21.56 1.4 Strasbourg (F-D) 24.8 0.8 25.99 1.6 Twente-Nordhorn (NL-D) 23.6 0.6 – – Vilnius (LT-BY) – – 18.29 0.9 Wien-Bratislava (A-SK-H) 23.3 3.4 39.68 4.1 Zagreb (HR-SLO) – – 15.81 1.5
16 Source: Sohn and Stambolic, 2015: 180
17 In these cross-border urban entities, high and still increasing land prices in cities and urban areas ac-company urban sprawl. As a consequence, transport infrastructure needs to be developed, taking even more land. Moreover, in urban areas soil compaction is driven by construction works and related machinery traffic. Destruction of the soil profile during construction works increases susceptibility to compaction (Schjønning et al., 2015). Furthermore, inhabitants commuting cross-border usually con-sume where goods are cheapest often causing high environmental footprints.
The phenomenon is also discussed in popular press, e. g. in the Basel area (Figure 4) or the area around Szczecin6. The examples show that society needs to trade off the economic and social advantages of open borders with uncontrolled negative environmental impacts.
Figure 4: Illustration of tri-lateral metropolitan area of Basel (Source: www.openstreetmap.org).
A further example for a cross-border urbanizing region is Alsace, located in East-France and very close to German and Swiss borders. A large part of the local population lives in the urban area. The three most important nearby cities are Strasbourg, Mulhouse and Colmar. The region is a transboundary network of commuting as well as shopping centres and leisure spots not only for French citizens, but also for German and Swiss citizens (Wackermann, 2000).
Also, the transportation of construction materials across Europe is an indirect transboundary soil use effect. Exemplary is the case of The Netherlands, which obtains 68 percent of their raw materials from abroad. Two thirds of the raw materials come from other European countries. The road construction sector in the Netherlands imports raw materials for asphalt and concrete from abroad, such as
6 Source:
18 “Graziet”, a type of rock. Because of its favourable characteristics it is imported from Central Germany to the Netherlands and used in road construction.
Another material is “Bims” a light volcanic material that is imported from Iceland and Germany as filler material. In the past sand was applied, but in areas with soft soils, the lighter volcanic material is be-coming more popular to avoid soil subsidence.
As KBU (2017) points out by removing lime, sand and gravel, the landscape is fundamentally changed. This has serious effects on soil structure and on groundwater balance. Substances released from open-cast mines by rain or groundwater can reach the groundwater or surface waters. This can acidify water or load them with iron or other metals – with devastating transboundary impacts.
2.1.2 Transboundary impacts of urbanisation Losing biodiversity and ecosystem functions
The “conversion of natural areas into agricultural land, forestry, climate change, encroachment from expanding human settlements, infrastructure and fragmentation” have been identified by Van der Esch et al. (2017: 67) as major causes for the severe decline of biodiversity up to 2010. Soil sealing decreases or might even stop the intensity of biological processes in the soil.
Soil sealing leads to a long-term loss of environmental soil functions. Water cycle processes get dete-riorated, increasing the risk of floods. The loss of filter and buffer functions often lead to groundwater level changes and can cause contamination by persistent chemicals and by pathogens (Siebielec et al., 2015). Such urbanisation consequences are not processes that stop at borders. Prosperous regions affect suburbanisation and country fragmentation in the surroundings. Municipalities in these areas compete for increasing tax revenues but are losing natural capital and have high external costs due to environmental impacts.
The consequences of the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functions include a reduction in food and biomass production. The increasing demand for food and biomass is satisfied through imports that are expensive and, in turn, put increasing pressure on ecosystems and especially soils elsewhere. De Schutter and Lutter (2016: 3) point out that “in 2010, the amount of land used to satisfy EU consump-tion, solely of agricultural goods and services, amounted to 269 million hectares – representing 43% more agricultural land than is available within the EU itself and an area almost the size of France and Italy used outside of EU borders. The significant use of land outside of the EU is potentially linked with high environmental and social impacts"
Biodiversity loss is estimated to increase from 34% in 2010 to 38-46% by 2050 under different scenar-ios. To slow down the rate of biodiversity loss, the expansion of agricultural areas must be halted. If the expansion of cropland including bio-energy crop plantations, infrastructure and urbanisation in-tensifies, the loss of biodiversity will continue.
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Challenging food security
The main impacts of sealing are the loss of fertile agricultural land and the shift of food production to other areas, so a trans-border impact is always expected. This is the most intense form of land take, and it is an essen-tially irreversible process: a sealed soil is
un-able to perform most of its functions (Huber et al., 2008; Prokop et al., 2011). Urbanisation, for exam-ple, represents an increase of sealed areas (or artificial surfaces) over time, at the expense of rural areas, usually agricultural land (Siebielec et al., 2015). It has been estimated that urban sprawl has produced the loss of 3.3 million hectares of arable land per year between 2000 and 2030 (Tal, 2018). According to d’Amouret al. (2017) between 2% and 3% of staple crop production will be lost to urban-ising areas in Europe by 2030, including circa a million tonnes per year for maize.Another example can be found in the region of Alsace, where the increasing urbanisation has besides positive impacts also negative impacts on the living quality in big cities. Urbanisation and its economic consequences endanger the groundwater resources of the Rhine river with the consequence that agriculture pro-duction in the area between Colmar and Mulhouse became dependent on artificial irrigation in order to remain competitive (Wackermann, 2000).
Boosting climate change
As pointed out by KBU (2017), soils play a central role in climate change. Their ability to store carbon makes them the world's second largest greenhouse gas storage, after oceans. Worldwide, about 1,500 billion tonnes of carbon are bound to the soil in the form of organic matter (humus).
KBU (2017) also points out that an important foundation for urban planning is wood - one of the oldest building materials of humanity. Large quantities of carbon are stored in the forests and their associ-ated soils, which are released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide as a result of deforestation – and consequent use of the wood, often in neighbouring countries.
2.2 Climate Change
Climate change describes a process of a significant change in climate such as temperature, rainfall and wind. It can be natural and human induced. Human activities such as deforestation, urbanisation and desertification but also emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture lead to significant changes in climate, e.g. increasing temperature of air and ocean, ice and snow melting that lead to a rising sea level, flooding and other impacts. Natural factors that can force climate change are for example changes in solar intensity, volcanic eruptions and changes in oceans circulation (EPA, 2018). Climate change leads to warmer climate conditions and causes periods with droughts in specific areas. The effects of climate change on soils include increased mineralization and decreased soil or-ganic matter (van den Akker et al., 2016). As soils host the largest terrestrial carbon pool, they play a crucial role in the global carbon balance, which is clearly transboundary.
“Translated into productivity, land take in the EU from 1990 to 2006 alone resulted in a loss of food-production capability equivalent to more than 6 million tonnes of wheat.” (EC, 2013: 6)
20 Climate change causes various pressures such as land use change, extreme weather events and energy production. These pressures induce transboundary impacts: increasing flood events, losing biodiver-sity and ecosystem functions, challenging food security, boosting climate change, threating human health, pushing migration, affecting sedimentation, or endangering water security (see Figure 5).
Figure 5: DPSIR approach applied to soil degradation from a transboundary perspective for the driver climate change (Source: Own compilation).
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2.2.1 Pressure from climate change: Extreme weather events
Climate change leads to higher frequency of extreme weather events such as droughts, storms or heavy rain events. The prognostics for climate change are different in various regions in Europe. Coun-tries along the Atlantic Ocean will suffer heavier rainfalls and higher risk of flooding. The temperature in the Alps and the Pyrenees will increase, leading to increasing snow and glacier melting. In the Med-iterranean, climate change will increase heat extremes, drought, wildfires and crop failure (Neslen, 2017). Figure 6 shows a map with the effects of climate change in Europe. Intense or long-lasting rainfall will lead to saturated soils and formation of lakes.
An increase of landslides associated to extreme rainfall events is expected in the future due to climate change. Moreover, rainfall on dried out soils is often lost by superficial runoff and cannot be stored. The average expected economic loss per year due to landslides in Europe is approximately 4.7 billion Euro (Haque et al., 2016). The highest annual economic loss associated with landslides occurs in Italy, with 3.9 billion Euro, whereas in Germany the annual total loss is about 0.3 billion Euro per year (Haque et al., 2016). Figure 7 shows the example of rainfall surplus in the Netherlands between 1st April 2018 to 7th August 2018 (KNMI, 2018).
22 Droughts can have many different effects on soils that can ultimately lead to desertification. The most prominent are soil erosion and soil nu-trient loss, but additional effects are possible, such as the collapse of peat levees. Droughts also constitute a threat for water security and con-tribute to heat island effects in cities that can cause rotting fundaments of houses, especially in historical cities where the water level is decreas-ing. “Europe is increasingly affected by desertifi-cation. The risk of desertification is most serious in southern Portugal, parts of Spain and southern Italy, south-eastern Greece, Malta, Cyprus, and the areas bordering the Black Sea in Bulgaria and Romania. Studies have reported these areas to be often impacted by soil erosion, salinisation, loss of soil organic carbon, loss of biodiversity and landslides" (ECA 2018: 7). However, deserti-fication is not only triggered by climate-related processes (aggravated by climate change) but also by human activities, such as inappropriate land and soil management.
The biggest impact of drought is expected in south-ern European countries, such as Greece, Portugal, Spain, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Malta (Schlanger, 2018). The agricultural sector will also suffer from drought. In addition to insufficient water, salt wa-ter intrusion will be increasingly important. This process has been described in the estuary of rivers located in the west of the Netherlands, up to water intake points. Saline water cannot be used for irri-gation.
Heatwaves constitute a further impact of climate change. The heatwave of 2018 was hotter than usual and more widespread (Vaughan, 2018). The greatest increase of heatwaves is being described in capital cities of Greece, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Italy, Bulgaria, Sweden, Malta and Austria (Schlanger, 2018). Figure 8 shows which impact heatwaves had from 19th July 2017 to 24th July 2018.
Figure 7: Rainfall surplus in the Netherlands between 1 April 2018 - 7 August 2018 (Source: KNMI, 2018).
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2.2.2 Transboundary impacts of extreme weather events Increasing flood events
The loss of soil ecosystem functions, such as a reduction of soil water holding capacity, can have a negative impact on water availability (e.g. water scarcity) and lead to higher risks of flooding (Van der Esch et al., 2017). Sea level rise increases the risk of coastal flooding, the erosion of coastal land and salinization of low-lying agricultural areas. Natural areas such as coastal wetlands and mangroves are at most risk. At the same time, coastal wetlands (and in tropical countries, mangroves) protect our coasts against natural hazards such as storms, tsunamis and coastal erosion. Also in Europe regions along the North Sea coast are affected by sea level rising. Regions that are not higher than 5 metres above the sea level are particularly endangered by floods. In the Baltic Sea, regions not higher than 3 metres above the sea level are concerned. Along these coast lines live around 3.2 million people, which may be affected through the increasing risk of floods (Spiegel Online, 2018).
Depending on geographical conditions, off-site effects of soil erosion by water and wind will cross national boundaries. Climate indirectly triggers water erosion through its influence on soil properties and soil cover. Soil texture, depth, structure, organic matter content and the presence of a surface crust strongly determine soil infiltration and soil water storage capacity, and therefore the response of soil to precipitation events. However, if future erosion rates exceed present rates, off-site impacts may become more widespread and more intense than today (Mullan, 2013). As an example, the costs of a landslide event in Italy exceeded 33 million Euro (Hervas, 2003). Overall losses for floods in the period 1998-2009 were about 52 billion Euro in EU-28. The EM-DAT database7 includes a total of 594 flood events registered in EU-28 between 1990 and 2017, with a total registered damage of 141,980 million US Dollar. For the period 2002-2013, the average cost per flood event in the EU-28 was 360 million Euro (Fenn et al., 2014).
Floods of transboundary rivers are more severe than those of national rivers because they affect larger areas (Bakker, 2007). Moreover, floodwaters carry pollutants or are mixed with contaminated water from drains and agricultural land, resulting in a removal of topsoil and in some cases cross-border pollution. Southern Europe suffers mostly from flash floods, potentially more disastrous than other types of floods. Countries with flood-prone areas at the North Sea coast include The Netherlands, UK, Denmark, Belgium and Germany. Critical areas of coastal flood as a result of storm surges include the cities of Amsterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, London, Porto, Norwich and Riga.
Future climate scenarios show that further intensification of the hydrological cycle can be expected for a large part of Europe, which will result in more intensive floods and droughts. Under a +2°C global warming scenario extreme floods are expected in Spain, Greece, France, Ireland and Albania, accord-ing to Roudier et al. (2016). Furthermore, simulations reveal an increase in flood risk due to extreme rainfall in Western Europe, the British Isles and northern Italy (Rojas et al., 2012). Conversely, the flood risk would not increase in eastern Germany, Poland, Southern Sweden and in the Baltic countries due to a reduction in floods provoked by snow melting.
24 So far, according to Blöschl et al. (2017), increased temperatures have led to earlier spring snowmelt floods in North-East Europe and delayed winter storms have led to later winter floods in the North Sea region and some parts of the Mediterranean coast. Additionally, earlier soil water saturation has led to earlier winter floods in Western Europe.
The analysis of shared river floods per year in Europe shows a steady increase of transboundary floods over the years. Europe has experienced the second highest number of transboundary floods between 1985 and 2005, with countries affected in the Danube and Rhine basins. When comparing the eco-nomic damage caused by floods of transboundary rivers by continent, Europe shows the highest ac-cumulated damage with a total of 90 billion US Dollars between 1985 and 2005, which “is 90 times larger than the damage in North America, 40 times larger than in Africa, nine times larger than in South America and still four times higher than in Asia” (Bakker, 2009: 280).
Threatening human health
The number of forest fires increased aggravated by inappropriate land and soil management and by climate extreme events, such as droughts. In 2018 Europe experienced a number of forest fires. The roaring temperatures and a long period of drought were the main reasons for the increase of forest fires in Sweden (see Figure 9). Forest fires caused 74 casualties across different villages of Greece (Perper, 2018). Not only the fire itself threats humans, but also the have negative impacts for the respiratory system of humans (see Figure 10). Through the 2018 heatwave forest fires increased in southern Portugal (BBC, 2018). Since these forest fires in Portugal were near to the border of Spain, fires crossed to Spanish boundary (Neuroth, 2018).
A further transboundary impact on human health is the transport and deposit of Saharan dust in southern Europe (see Figure 11). This was particularly important in Greece: African dust turned much of southern Greece into a landscape more akin to the planet Mars (see Figure 12) (Kokkindis, 2018). From the northern leafy suburbs to the Acropolis and the historical centre and all the way south to Piraeus, a thick orange cloud of dust blanketed the Greek capital as doctors warned vulnerable people to stay indoors (Carlowicz, 2018).
Figure 10: Forest fire (Source: pixabay.com). Figure 9: Forest fire (Source: maxpixel.net).
25 Figure 11: Saharan Dust over the Eastern Mediterranean (Source: wikimedia.org).
Figure 12: Sirocco from Libya (Source: wikimedia.org).
The transport of soil particles by wind and the harmful chemical substances such as glyphosate at-tached to them across long distances and intra-EU borders are another threat to human health. Espe-cially because the pesticide residues transported by the wind can end up not only in the atmosphere but also in water bodies and again soils (Silva et al., 2018).
Intensified sedimentation
Sediment transport resulting from soil erosion gained importance in the context of river basin man-agement and the European Water Framework Directive (EU WFD)8. “There are about one hundred transboundary river basins in the EU, 25 of which have identified soil erosion linked to agriculture as a problem” (Bucella, 2015: 4). The river Rhine is a known example of the transboundary impact of sediment transport (Asselmann et al., 2003). Estimates of sediment supply are about 117 million tonnes per year for the whole river under the current climate and land use. Especially the transport of
contaminated sediments in transboundary river basins can have adverse effects on the environment,
human health and the economy across borders. Because sediments move through the river basin to the sea, such effects can occur not only locally but also far from the source of the contamination.
8 Directive 2000/60/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2000 establishing a framework for
26 In the future, the Alps will continue playing an important role as source of sediments, whereas a re-duction of sediment supply is expected in the German river sector due to land use changes. The in-creasing temperatures in the Alps are expected to lead to snow and glacier melting, inducing sedimen-tation transport in the valleys below. In the Danube river region, soil erosion in one country may result in reservoir siltation in another country downstream.
If the eroded sediments are deposited in an international river, soil erosion by water will have trans-boundary impacts for downstream countries, particularly through the increase and potential contam-ination of sediment load. When contaminated soils are water eroded, pollutants can cross boundaries, particularly during storm and flood events. This happens frequently when polluted, industrialized river banks are eroded. Peak loads are trans-ported downstream, often crossing bor-ders. Limitations in source control poli-cies in an upstream country force the problem on to downstream countries.
Pushing migration
As previously mentioned, climate change contributes to migration and will force it in the next years (Apap, 2018). Migration can be defined as a strategy “to cope with temporal and geographical varia-bility” (Foresight2011: 71) in order to change incomes and to secure livelihoods. It is estimated that millions of people are migrating globally each year due to degraded land (UNCCD, 2017). The number of migrants reached 258 million in 2017.
By 2050, the number of migrants could reach 200 million people, responding, in part, to increased environmental pressure (UNCCD, 2017; Apap, 2018). Hotspots of migration are the Sahel zone, the Middle East and Central Asia. About 40% of migration is linked to “[…] control or use of natural re-sources, such as land, water, minerals or oil” (UNCCD, 2017: 93). Land degradation and migration are often closely connected as they are influenced by population growth and the turn of “traditional or communal land tenure rights into private ownership” (UNCCD, 2017: 96).
Migrants responding to climate change are called ‘climate refugees’. This term was not clearly defined or included in the 1951 Refugee Convention (Apap, 2018). Essam El-Hinnawi, from the UN Environ-ment Programme (UNEP) “[…] defined ‘environEnviron-mental refugees as those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of marked environmental dis-ruption (natural and/ or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/ or seriously af-fected the quality of their life” (Apap, 2018: 4).
Seasonal migration includes for instance small-scale dryland farmers migrating for labour to cope with drought. Long-term migration from rural to urban communities is a social and economic process, par-tially driven by land degradation (UNCCD, 2017). According to this source, “in the future, climate change will influence the dynamic interactions of land degradation and migration by exacerbating nat-ural phenomena that influence soil, water, and biodiversity, such as precipitation variability, droughts, and extreme weather events, and by affecting agricultural productivity, which in turn affects house-hold incomes and the price of food” (UNCCD, 2017: 98).
“The Port of Rotterdam has to dredge every year between four and seven cubic meter of sediments, a good half of which are brought down by the river Rhine as an effect of unsustainable soil erosion up-stream” (Bucella, 2015: 4).
27 Migration as a response to climate change is a serious issue not only in Africa but also in the EU. Dis-placement of people from rural areas to the cities (sometimes cross-border) is increasingly triggered by social and economic drivers and partly associated to land degradation and desertification. The con-sequence being land abandonment that can aggravate the degradation of soil and land, such as by increased soil erosion due to the fact that terraces or other protection measures are not maintained anymore.
Population in regions in coastal areas will be largely affected by climate change. Worldwide, in 2016, 24.2 million people had to be displaced due to natural disasters. Of them, 0.2% were located in Europe and Central Asia. The main part is affected in East Asia and the Pacific with 67.8% (Apap, 2018). On the other hand, climate change leads to outmigration of the younger population. For example rural areas, such as mountain regions, are particularly vulnerable to the potential impacts of climate change, which can further impair the attractiveness of these regions for residents. These phenomena result in outmigration of the younger population, which in turn translates into a decline of human and social capital, a low rate of entrepreneurship and innovation and a general lower economic performance (ESPON, n.d.).
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2.3 Economic growth
Economic growth as a driver includes especially globalization and the increasing world population with the increasing demand on goods, food and energy. It leads to the pressures land use management, waste management, industrial activities, energy production and urbanisation that have
transbound-ary impacts such as increasing flood events, losing biodiversity and ecosystem functions, challenging
food security, boosting climate change, threatening human health, affecting sedimentation, endan-gering water security (see Figure 13).
Figure 13: DPSIR approach applied to soil degradation from a transboundary perspective for the driver policies (Source: Own compilation).
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2.3.1 Pressures from economic growth: Land use management, waste management, industrial ac-tivities and energy production
Land use management
About 95% of global food is produced in soil (FAO, 2015) and approximately 37.49% (as of 2015) of the global land area is already devoted to agriculture (The World Bank, 2018). With the growing world population and the described changes in lifestyle, it is expected that the cereal demand will increase up to 3 billion tonnes in 2050 (FAO, 2009).
On the one side, agriculture provides revenue for 10.8 million EU farmers and the output value of the agricultural industry (comprising output value of crops and animals, agricultural services and the goods and services produced from inseparable non-agricultural secondary activities) was an estimated 411.2 billion Euro in 2014. Agriculture and food commodities are very important economically, with 350 billion Euro trade on the internal market (for the year 2016) and 129.1 billion Euro trade in exports to third countries (in 2015) (EC, 2017), so it has a positive transboundary impact.
On the other side, much of the EU footprint of food and industrial products depends on cropland. Between 1995 and 2010 “[…] trade volumes and embedded cropland resources increased” (Fischer et al., 2017: 49). In 2010, the EU required 269 million hectares to satisfy the consumption within the EU which is 43% more land than the EU has available (De Schutter and Lutter, 2016). More than one fifth of the cropland required to satisfy the EU demand is located outside the EU, in countries such as
Ma-laysia, Bangladesh, Thailand and Philippines (Fischer et al., 2017). Producing outside the EU, results in additional environmental and social impacts. Key regions providing Euro-pean food security include 17 million ha from South America and Sub-Saharan Africa (Fischer et al., 2017). Fischer et al. (2017) showed that the cropland footprint in the EU decreased from 170 to 157 million hain the period 1995 to 2010, whereas the consumption of non-food industrial products in-creased from 463 m2 per capita in 1995 to 540 m2 in 2010. The crop-based industrial footprint in-creased by 14% since 1995. A major supplying country for 10% of non-food cropland footprint for the EU is China. As an exporter of maize for industrial uses, North America plays an important role for the EU. It adds up to 10% of the non-food cropland footprint from the EU. Africa and Middle East took about 7% (Fischer et al., 2017).
Unsustainable soil use and management due to agricultural land use intensification threatens both the quality and quantity of European and global soil stocks (GSP et al., 2015). According to the FAO, 32% of global soils are estimated to be moderately to severely degraded due to natural and anthro-pogenic factors, in particular unsustainable soil management (FAO, 2016a). Soil erosion, loss of organic matter, salinization, soil pollution and compaction (with subsequent impact on soil biodiversity) are the main forms of degradation of agricultural soils worldwide (GSP et al., 2015).
In order to increase crop yield, farmers apply mineral and/or organic fertilizers. In the northwest of Europe (in countries such as The Netherlands or Germany) there are many livestock farms with intense animal production (Deutscher Bundestag, 2013). Since the Dutch manure legislation changed in 2006, less manure can be placed on agricultural lands.
EU food consumptions put a lot of pressure on agricultural land in Europe but also globally.
30 This is why manure is exported outside the Dutch agricultural sector (Figure 14). In 2016, almost 2.2 million tonnes of manure were exported to Germany. This represents 66% of the total manure exports from the Netherlands (Ministerie van Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit, 2017).
Waste management
If Europe treats waste as a resource, it can secure social and economic benefits and reduce environ-mental pressures. One of the key aspects of resource efficiency and circular economy is to prevent and manage waste. Europe has various waste policies and targets since 1990 including legislation on waste streams, e.g. packaging, vehicles and electronic equipment, or on prevention and recycling of waste. Between 2004 and 2010 the EU, Iceland and Norway reduced their total waste deposited in landfills by about 23% (from 205 billion to 157 billion tonnes waste). In contrast to the decrease in waste deposit in landfills the export of waste from EU member states to Asia has grown. This includes the export of waste iron, steel, copper, aluminium and nickel, which has doubled from 1999 to 2011. The transboundary movements of waste have various positive impacts for the country of origin, there-under lower financial costs for waste management and also lower environmental costs (EEA, 2015c). Landfilling represents an enormous loss of resources in the form of both materials and energy. In ad-dition, the management and disposal of waste can have serious environmental impacts. Landfills, take up land space and may cause air, water and soil pollution, while incineration may result in emissions of air pollutants.
The EU Waste Framework Directive9 therefore aims to reducing the environmental and health impacts of waste and to improve the EU’s resource efficiency (EC, 2008). Moreover, in 2015 the European
9 Directive 2008/98/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 November 2008 on waste and repealing certain
Directives.
Figure 14: Export animal manure from the Netherlands (tonnes per year) (Source:
31 Commission adopted an action plan for the circular economy promoting the concept of recycling wastes as secondary raw material
The long-term aim of these policies is to reduce the amount of waste generated. When waste gener-ation is unavoidable, the goal is to promote it as a resource and achieve higher levels of recycling and
safe disposal. In 2014, 4.9 tonnes of waste were generated per EU inhabitant (Eurostat, 2017). Figure 1510 shows an overview of the waste generation by economic activities and household.
The disposal of waste has transboundary ef-fects. For example, the UK sends their waste overseas for recycling, but because of inade-quate controls there is a possibility that this could be dumped or sent to a landfill instead. In 2017 the UK sent their waste to countries such as China, Turkey, Malaysia and Poland (Hughes, 2018). Strong and sufficient controls from the Environment Agency on waste dumping are required to prevent abuse of the system. Another step was taken by China in 2018 by adopting a law banning the import of waste from external countries.
Industrial activities
(Historical and current) industrial activities are a driver for pollution and waste production in different forms. With industrialization, soil contamination by heavy metals and mineral oil became a wide-spread problem in Europe (Science Communication Unit, 2013).
Air pollution by industry is a threat to soils not only in the regions where it occurs but also, depending on wind direction and intensity, further away. Due to EU regulations and new technologies air pollu-tion in the EU has decreased since 1990 for all main air pollutants (EEA, 2017a). But air pollupollu-tion is still significant and leads to soil and groundwater contamination. Most studies concerning transboundary impact of contamination focus on diffuse transport of contaminants between countries. Kaitala et al. (1992) presented an example of transboundary impact of soil contamination and showed that sulphur emission from the former USSR had been transported to Finland.
Energy production
10 Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/c/c7/Waste_generation_by_economic_
activi-ties_and_households%2C_EU-28%2C_2014_%28%25%29_YB17.png (9/11/2918) Figure 15: Waste generation by economic activities and
32 Energy production and distribution, energy use in industry and industrial processes and production are primarily responsible for the emission of heavy metals, e.g., cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg) and lead (Pb) (EEA, 2017b). Germany, Poland, Italy and Spain were the countries with the highest emissions of Pb and Cd in 2015. Energy production and land management can be influenced by socio-economic and political factors (e.g. policies conditioning the choice of land use and crops; adoption of control measures as a function of crop economic margins) (Borrelli et al., 2016). The energy production from biomass and renewable waste increased in the EU territory by 302% between 1990 and 2015 (Eurostat, 2016). Agricultural biofuel production is in potential competition with agricultural food production and might also induce unsustainable land use changes and inappropriate soil management. According to De Schutter and Giljum (2014), in order to meet the National Renewable Energy Action Plans of EU member states, biomass for energy generation should occupy 10.9% of the cultivated land and 31.6% of the forested area in the EU in 2020, when making the assumption that all required biomass is pro-duced in the EU. This is also related to the EU’s land footprint.
With the revised Renewables Energy Directive11 the EU established a new binding renewable energy target for 2030 of at least 32%. However, the legislation for energy production differs widely across Europe, with countries such as Romania having no specific legislation on where to build solar panels, so that solar energy panels are placed on fertile soils. However, policy impacts are to be assessed not only in relation to the objectives of the specific policy. For example, in Slovakia land is bought by Ger-man and Austrian companies. This issue known as land grabbing is a concern at EU level in particular in Eastern countries such as Romania, Slovakia and others and was already addressed by the European Parliament in 2017.12
These companies often get a subsidy from the EU, e.g. for the production of biofuels, but the local ecosystem functions are distorted. Unsustainable land use changes stimulated by energy production involve not only transitions between broad groups of land use type but also changes in intensification of arable land use or simplification of cropping structure (e.g. monocultures for biofuel production).
11 Directive (EU) 2018/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 December 2018 on the promotion of the
use of energy from renewable sources.
12 European Parliament 2017. Motion for a European Parliament Resolution on the state of play of farmland concentration
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2.3.2 Transboundary impacts of land use management, waste management, industrial activities and energy production
Endangering water quality
More and more concerns are expressed about the impact of soil degradation on environmental and human health. Soil degradation can lead to water contamination when the filtering capacity of the soil is not sufficient to neutralise contaminants. Soil erosion that washes away sediments in one country can block dams or damage infrastructure such as harbours in other countries; contaminated soil can also pollute the groundwater in a neighbouring country. Loss of land capacity to fulfil production, eco-system or recreation functions due to soil and groundwater contamination in post-industrial regions might have socio-economic transboundary consequences, such as land abandonment, loss of income or deterioration of public health. Nutrient leaching due to over-fertilisation and pollution (of water and soil) from the overuse of pesticides is another example of degradation with impact on human health.
The reports from the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission (HELCOM) under the Helsinki Convention illustrate the transboundary effects of soil contamination on surface water. The Baltic Sea is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden. Eu-trophication caused by oversupply of nutrients in agricultural land around the Baltic Sea is the major environmental pressure on the marine ecosystem. Harmful chemicals and heavy metals enter the Bal-tic Sea via numerous sources, including from waste water treatment plants, leaching from landfills and filling material, spreading of sewage sludge, atmospheric deposition of industrial emissions, and agri-cultural use of fertilisers and pesticides (HELCOM, 2018).
The disposal of waste outside the EU leads to waste not being recycled according to EU standards. This creates landfills and contributes to pollution (Hughes, 2018). The waste receiving countries have no possibilities to safely dispose of it, and pollution increases.
Boosting climate change
Soils can be a source or a sink of carbon and greenhouse gasses depending on their properties and state. Soil is the world’s largest terrestrial pool of carbon (Scharlemann et al., 2014; IPCC, 2000) and plays a crucial role in the global carbon balance (Lal, 2013). At a global level, the soil organic carbon (SOC) pool stores more carbon than is contained in the atmosphere and terrestrial vegetation com-bined (GSP et al., 2015). Climate conditions, soil characteristics and the management and land-use practices determine the potential of soils to offset atmospheric CO2 levels through carbon sequestra-tion.
Assessments of future SOC change for Europe have concluded that northern (versus southern) Euro-pean countries will have the greatest (versus the lowest) potential for SOC sequestration by 2050 un-der different management scenarios (Lugato et al., 2015). Soil carbon stocks in the EU are estimated between 73 and 79 billion tonnes, of which about 50% are stored in peatlands in the UK, Finland and Sweden (Schils et al., 2008).
34 Transforming peatlands into croplands for bioenergy production entails soil subsidence, loss of water holding capacity, rapid organic matter degradation and CO2 emissions. Some land use changes strongly affect the soil C stock. However, conversion back to grassland increases the C stock, as documented in a long term study in Sweden (Kätterer et al., 2008). The degradation of peatlands caused by peat extraction and drainage for agriculture or forestry is estimated to affect 49% of peatlands in the EU (Schils et al., 2008) and has a huge impact on carbon emission at continental and global scale. Further-more, mineralisation of peat soils limits water retention at landscape level, which in consequence might change local climate and resilience of the ecosystem to droughts.
This transboundary responsibility to use soil as a carbon sink has been emphasized by the call of the “4‰ Initiative. Soils for food security and climate” by the French Ministry of Agriculture, Agrifood, and Forestry (2017). This initiative promotes locally adapted agricultural practises such as conservation agriculture to increase soil organic matter content and support carbon sequestration. The initiative combines a voluntary action plan with a research program that governments, farmers, NGOs and re-search institutes can join. They are asked to set-up training programmes, create policies and provide financial support for development projects to support the aims of the initiative.
Losing biodiversity and ecosystem functions
The future value of ecosystem services (ESS) has been estimated under various scenarios by the Eco-nomics of Land Degradation (ELD) initiative (UNCCD, 2017). Through government interventions and effective land policies, the value of ESS could be increased by about 3.2 trillion US Dollar per year. A promotion of adequate policy measures is needed for a sustainable socio-economic value of land (Ku-biszewski et al., 2017).
In rural areas soil compaction is accelerated by heavy agricultural machinery and frequent vehicle traffic or intensive trampling by animals. Reducing farming labour leads to the use of larger and more effective machinery (Schjønning et al., 2015). The expectation of increased agricultural biomass pro-duction for energy purposes might induce recovery of marginal lands for cropping. However, use of certain types of marginal land for biomass production shall be avoided as it can be a biodiversity hotspot.
Threatening human health
Another example of health threat is the transport of Saharan sands to countries in Europe. This is a well-observed phenomenon – so it is no wonder that wind erodes and transports soil particles also between European countries. However, the actual evidence-base and data on the extent is by far smaller than for water transported soil fragments. Illegal waste dumping abroad has negative healthy effects on the local people that receive the waste (EEA, 2015c).
Related to land use management, local contamination of agricultural soils can lead to transboundary risks when resulting in food contamination that subsequently circulates freely in the EU internal mar-ket. In the past, EFSA (2012) has provided scientific evidence that the actual dietary exposure to cad-mium exceeds the tolerable dietary exposure more than twice for a significant number of Europeans, including children. Food from agricultural products is the main source of cadmium exposure for the general, non-smoking population in the EU, and fertilisation with phosphate fertilisers is by far the main cause of cadmium contamination of European agricultural soils.
